In its quest to build a better J2EE mousetrap, Borland Software inked a deal this week with TIBCO Software to mix some of their products together.

The partnership, announced Wednesday, means Palo Alto, Calif.-based TIBCO will "embed and distribute" its Enterprise for Java Messaging Service (JMS) engine with Borland's Enterprise Server, Team Edition and future versions of its Enterprise Server.

It also signals the end of Borland's longtime JMS relationship with Sonic Software, an independent operating company within Progress Software . Sonic's JMS previously shipped with the Borland Enterprise Server AppServer Edition.

Borland says the switch to TIBCO will help them target vertical markets such as telecommunications, financial services and independent software vendors who include Borland Enterprise Server within their products. The two companies have worked together before and say there are "inherent synergies that exist between" them.

"It is all part of our ongoing commitment to ensure an outstanding customer experience," Borland president and CEO Dale Fuller said in a statement. "With this technology integration we are leveraging TIBCO's expertise and experience as a respected provider of high-performance messaging software and business integration."

According to published reports, the change towards TIBCO came as the result of a request by Borland customer Cisco Systems back in early 2002.

Borland said it expects to put TIBCO's JMS in the next release of Borland's application server, Version 6.0, due in November.

"This relationship really addresses the need of customers to have better integration points with our enterprise application integration infrastructure while designing their applications," said TIBCO chairman, president and CEO Vivek Ranadive. "This improves the overall business integration effort from the business analyst, architect and developer all the way up to the CTO."

The partnership is also expected to help boost Borland's application lifecycle products, which has included acquisitions such as TogetherSoft and Starbase.

The JMS API is a core piece of the J2EE 1.3 platform, allowing for things like a message-driven bean that enables the asynchronous consumption of messages. Message sends and receives can also participate in Java Transaction API (JTA) transactions. The API is expected to be improved on when Sun Microsystems releases its J2EE 1.4 spec in a few weeks.